Albrecht Gaiswinkler

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Albrecht Gaiswinkler (born October 29, 1905 in Aussee ; † May 11, 1979 in Bad Aussee ) was an Austrian civil servant, social democrat and resistance fighter, first against Austrofascism and later against National Socialism . From 1944 he worked with the British secret service Special Operations Executive and planned an assassination attempt on Joseph Goebbels in 1945 . Gaiswinkler himself and some sources erroneously claimed that in the last days of the war he had saved the art treasures from all over Europe from destruction, which were stored in a salt mine in Altaussee . Alongside Sepp Plieseis , he is considered one of the most important figures in the resistance against National Socialism in the Salzkammergut .

youth

Albrecht Gaiswinkler was born in Bad Aussee in 1905 as the son of a saltworker. After attending elementary school and community school, he worked as a road worker and later became an official at the health insurance company. Politically, he was initially active in the run-up organizations of the Socialist Party and the Socialist Youth Workers and then became secretary of the Austrian Social Democratic Workers' Party and company commander of the Republican Protection Association . After the February fighting in 1934 and the party was banned, he was politically persecuted and spent eight months in prison in Leoben . He later became the district organizer of the Revolutionary Socialists and for a short time also a member of the Communist Party.

Resistance in the Salzkammergut

In February 1940 Gaiswinkler was one of the founding members of a resistance group in Aussee. Other members were Hans Moser, who later died in a bomb attack, the gendarmerie officer Valentin Tarra , Karl Feldhammer, Hans Renner and a certain Schlömer and Weber, the first two of whom are unknown. However, the group's activities were soon put to an end because most of the members were drafted into military service. Gaiswinkler was drafted into the Wehrmacht in 1942 and used in various theaters of war. In 1944 he was stationed in occupied France, where he witnessed a shooting of French resistance fighters in Normandy . Thereupon he made the decision to desert and staged a deception maneuver. He exchanged papers and identification tags with a bomb victim who had been mutilated beyond recognition in order to protect his relatives at home from reprisals, then sought contact with the French Resistance together with 17 prisoners and joined the Maquis . He managed to steal four trucks loaded with weapons and ammunition as well as 500,000 francs from the stocks of the Wehrmacht. A short time later he came into contact with the British and from then on worked for the British secret service. He was used by the Special Operations Executive (SOE) for various missions in the area of ​​former Austria. This organization founded by Winston Churchill in 1940 had the task of organizing resistance in the countries occupied by the Wehrmacht, and also had an Austrian Section ( Austrian Section ), for which Gaiswinkler was recruited. The main task of this section was to establish contact with existing resistance organizations and to provide them with weapons, explosives, radio equipment and information.

Jump over the Feuerkogel

On April 8, 1945, the group jumped from a British Halifax plane over the Feuerkogel

When the defeat of the German Reich was already becoming apparent, the SOE switched to dropping agents in the areas to be conquered soon, who were supposed to prepare for the imminent arrival of the Allies. Albrecht Gaiswinkler was therefore entrusted with the mission of parachuting from a Royal Air Force aircraft over the Feuerkogel in order to establish contact with resistance groups in the Salzkammergut. In addition, he was assigned two other Austrians in British service, namely the Viennese Karl Lzicar and Karl Standhartinger, as well as the radio operator Josef Hans Grafl , who came from Schattendorf in Burgenland . In April 1945 the jump over enemy territory finally took place. The main aim of their mission was the arrest or shooting of the Reich Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, who was suspected by the British secret service on vacation at Grundlsee . This actually corresponded to reality, but the group's radio was damaged when they jumped and due to the interrupted communication this operation could not be carried out in time, as Goebbels had already left before the planned access to Berlin due to the worsening war situation. The Rieder Hütte served as a shelter and hiding place from the National Socialists .

The secondary goal of this jump was to establish contact with local resistance groups, as the Western Allies feared that the Salzkammergut could actually be expanded by the National Socialists into a much-invoked Alpine fortress . After the group had learned that Goebbels had already left and that the preparations for the construction of an Alpine fortress were a propaganda lie, the group went into hiding and waited for the Allies to invade. They reached Bad Ischl on May 6, Bad Aussee on May 8 and Gosau on May 11 . During these last days of the war, Gaiswinkler's role as the organizer and major of an allegedly up to 300-strong resistance group in the Salzkammergut, which is historically controversial and has not been verified, also falls .

Rescue of the art treasures in Altaussee

Gaiswinkler and some sources claimed that at the beginning of May 1945 he was one of the most important figures in the resistance against National Socialism in the Salzkammergut and, among other things, played a key role in bringing the art treasures stored in the salt tunnels of the Altaussee mine from all over Europe against the orders of Gauleiter August Eigruber were not destroyed. These included not only valuable objects from Germany, but also the Austrian crown jewels, the Ghent Altarpiece and paintings by Raffael , Titian , Albrecht Dürer and Jan Vermeer . The exact circumstances of this rescue of European works of art have not yet been fully clarified; It is clear, however, that Gaiswinkler had nothing to do with it.

Gaiswinkler himself claimed after the war that he played a key role in removing and hiding the bombs that had already been delivered to blow up the tunnels. Other sources, however, said that this was due to the initiative of the saltworkers who had become suspicious. Still other sources stated that the SS-Obergruppenführer and Police General Ernst Kaltenbrunner (from Upper Austria) had personally thwarted the order to destroy the art treasures in Altaussee ; this seems to correspond to the facts, even if Kaltenbrunner did not act on his own initiative, but at the urgent suggestion of the miner Alois Raudaschl (also named by Hugo Portisch ), whereby employees of the salt works had done the preliminary work. The assertion that the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in Paris was among these works of art proved to be erroneous.

“The events in the Aussee area since mid-1944 definitely deserve a special book, or maybe even several books. They would contain enough material for a number of exciting films in which the most incredible things are likely to occur [...] that are historically proven. "

- Simon Wiesenthal

After the end of the war

After the end of the war, Gaiswinkler went into politics and was temporarily appointed by the Americans as government commissioner (district captain) for Aussee. In the first election to the National Council on November 25, 1945, he was elected to parliament as a member of the SPÖ. In his election, an agreement with the Styrian SPÖ apparently also played a role, in which Gaiswinkler campaigned for the Ausseerland to be reintegrated into the state of Styria, which he also succeeded in a referendum held before the first national elections. In 1947 he published his memories of the events during the war and especially the last turbulent days of the war in the Ausseerland in book form under the title "Jump into freedom". There are indications that the work was actually written by the German writer Rudolf Daumann . However, the information provided in it differs greatly from the information provided by other contemporary witnesses. Josef Grafl, who jumped with him over the Feuerkogel, described the events of those days in a completely different way and also expressed serious allegations against Gaiswinkler. Various other parties involved claimed that the art treasures were saved.

The accusations of other participants against Gaiswinkler, however, led to the fact that he was no longer put up as a candidate for the National Council by the Styrian SPÖ in 1949. He was expelled from the SPÖ and then joined the left-wing socialists who ran alongside the communists in 1949. His political career came to an end, however, as they could only achieve three mandates across Austria. He then returned to his previous job and again became a civil servant at the health insurance company, where he later also became regional manager. He was also one of the founding members of the newly founded workers' gymnastics and sports club ATSV Bad Aussee. In 1950 he wrote a mountaineering novel about Karl Resch and Franz Maier, who died on the Grimming in 1948 , under the title "Heroes in the Rock".

Albrecht Gaiswinkler stayed in his homeland for the remaining years of his life and died on May 11, 1979 in Bad Aussee.

Controversy about the Goebbels assassination attempt

The exact circumstances of this British operation to arrest Goebbels in April 1945 have not been fully clarified to this day, as some documents were burned in 1945 and others are still kept secret today. The details mentioned here are mainly based on the statements of Josef Grafl; Albrecht Gaiswinkler never made any clear statements about this. Grafl later also testified that the radio was not damaged at all and that Gaiswinkler persuaded him to leave the radio on the mountain after jumping over the Feuerkogel, as a descent into the valley with this load was not possible. Grafl, a native of the Burgenland, believed Gaiswinkler, and so communication with the British command center was sometimes deliberately interrupted. According to other sources, Goebbels had already left the Salzkammergut a few days before the Austrian agents on British service left the Salzkammergut and the mission was therefore a failure from the start.

Hollywood, on the other hand, has taken on this topic despite the sparse sources and parts of the story about Albrecht Gaiswinkler and Josef Grafl were taken over in 1968 in the film " Where Eagles Dare " with Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood . This film was shot in the nearby Ennstal and at Hohenwerfen Castle and also shows scenes from the actual scene of these events on the Feuerkogel. However, the agents portrayed here were British and American, and this film also makes full use of artistic freedom in other ways. A film adaptation that is closer to historical facts and is based on the memoirs of Albrecht Gaiswinkler is the television film “At the end of a long winter”, which was jointly produced by ORF and ARD in 1990 based on a book by Walter Wippersberg .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ DerStandard: Hiking in Upper Austria: On the trail of the resistance to the Rieder Hut
  2. ↑ Robert M. Edsel with Bret Witter: Monuments Men. The hunt for Hitler's looted art (Original: The Monuments Men. Allied heroes, Nazi thieves, and the greatest treasure hunt in history , Center Street, New York 2009), Residenz Verlag, Vienna 2013, ISBN 978-3-7017-3304-0 , p. 443 ff.
  3. ↑ Klaus Kienesberger, Lukas Meissel: Resistance Fragments . Structure and traditional fragments of the resistance against National Socialism in Ausseerland. In: Christine Schindler on behalf of the Documentation Archive of the Austrian Resistance (Ed.): Nisko 1939. The fate of the Jews from Vienna. DÖW yearbook 2020. Vienna 2020, ISBN 978-3-901142-77-2 , p. 347.

literature

  • Albrecht Gaiswinkler: Jump into freedom . Ried-Verlag, Vienna 1947
  • Peter Kammerstätter: Material collection on the resistance and partisan movement Willy-Fred in the upper Salzkammergut-Ausseerland 1943 - 1945 . Self-published, Linz 1978
  • Christian Topf: On the trail of the partisans, historical walks in the Salzkammergut . Edition History of Homeland, Grünbach 1996, new edition. 2006 ISBN 3-900943-32-X
  • Peter Pirker : Subversion of German rule. The British War Intelligence Service SOE and Austria. Contemporary history in context, 6. Göttingen 2012

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Gaiswinkler, Albrecht
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian civil servant and politician (SDAP, SPÖ), resistance fighter against National Socialism, member of the National Council
DATE OF BIRTH October 29, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Bad Aussee
DATE OF DEATH May 11, 1979
Place of death Bad Aussee